1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to educational course content development, and more particularly to a computer based system and method for the creation and access of dynamic course content and associated media products.
2. Description of Related Art
Traditional courses that are taught in, for example, a college or university environment, often rely heavily on a textbook for course content. Over the years, many courses have been taught based on a chapter to chapter approach to learning. This approach has been proven to work well with static, and often times mature technical fields. With the continued growth in knowledge dissemination technologies driven by computers and networking, many fields of endeavor today change and evolve fairly quickly, leaving the static textbook model of course content development lacking current and timely information in addition, textbooks are still, largely bound and printed materials, which makes changes and updates difficult and costly. This disparity between the need for current and timely information and the static confines of traditional textbooks has forced many textbook publishers to add supplemental materials to their textbook offerings. These supplemental materials may include videos, slides, supplements and addenda, course packs, ancillaries, and other such add-ons. The offering of supplemental materials by textbook publishers, while an improvement over the static nature of the textbook itself, is still, however, static. Although publishers have begun to provide a number of online resources in the form of online quizzes and interactive flash cards, for example, these are targeted at students and for the most part still remain fixed in nature, and do not adequately address the need for fresh, dynamic material in course content development.
The addition of dynamic and current material to an otherwise static textbook approach to learning has been recognized by many innovative faculty members, professors, and course instructors. Not only does the addition of such dynamic and current material add to the overall learning experience, but the use of current, real world applications of theoretical course concepts also captures the interest and attention of students, making classroom time more effective and productive.
The task of locating, reviewing and using dynamic and current material in the development of course content has been relegated to those instructors who have the time, determination and energy to seek out relevant articles, news clippings, and other timely and current media information. Once appropriate content is found, it is often times out of date by the time a course is taught in subsequent quarters or semesters. This creates a burden on the instructor to continually seek out timely and relevant information for each upcoming class. The ongoing search for relevant and timely course content has in the past been very labor intensive, and as a result is often times not done with consistency and thoroughness.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a system and method for the creation and access of dynamic course content. It is another object of the present invention to provide a system and method for the creation and access of dynamic course content that correlates the structure of a selected textbook with current content media information. It is another object of the present invention to provide a system and method for the creation and access of dynamic course content that correlates media products to current content. It is another object of the present invention to provide a system and method for the creation and access of dynamic course content that has a search function for finding media products based on user search criteria. It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a system and method for the creation and access of dynamic course content that can be accessed through a network. It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a system and method for the creation and access of dynamic course content that allows a user to download media products based on user defined search and selection criteria. It is another object of the present invention to provide a method for the creation of a dynamic course syllabus where current content is correlated to events in a course. These and other objects of the present invention will become evident to one skilled in the art after a review of this specification, claims, and the attached drawings.